Rora by James Byron Huggins Read Free Book Online

him.
    ***
    Gianavel had heard the name and identified the commander in chief— Captain Mario.
    You're next —
    Almost instantly Gianavel found another tree. He quie tly raised aim at Mario who had stupidly drawn his sword and, even more stupidly, was bellowing commands.
    Even as Gianavel pulled the trigger, the standard-bearer stumbled into the path of the bullet, and the captain was saved by the unintended sacrifice. Gianavel's shot hit the man dead center of the spine, and he fell forward, knocking the captain back across a boulder as the soldiers fell frantically into columns, aiming at either ridge.
    Gianavel twisted behind a tree as they fired—a single thunderous discharge of white that hit the hillside, but only the hillside, in a voluminous rain of lead.
    Almost before the sound struck the leaves about him, Gianavel moved again, keeping high on the trail for swiftness. When he reached his third shooting position, he saw that the column had reloaded and leveled once more. The second enfilade ripped through the foliage and bored into trees as Gianavel twisted back and reloaded.
    Gianavel fired in the heartbeat to kill another sergeant, and then he moved again, listening to know where each of his men was firing from the slopes, knowing exactly where they were inflicting damage. He positioned himself to hit what they were missing. Gianavel smiled, for they were doing exactly as he had instructed them, hitting and moving, hitting and moving, and it was having a cumulative effect.
    With four commanders struck down already, the ravine erupted in chaos. Gianavel saw no sergeants standing, only one lieutenant. The standard-bearer was also down, leaving no one to coordinate the musketeers who were leaving large holes in their firing pattern. A few men with crossbows were also firing bolts blindly into the thick skew of leprous-white boulders that littered the walls, and the firing continued from Bertino and his men.
    Every one of the Waldenses was an accomplished marksman, taught by their fathers at a young age because both farming and hunting were skills that every man needed to know in order to survive. And now they were using those patiently taught hunting skills to save their lives in another way.
    The first mistake of Captain Mario was that his men were so thickly crushed into the narrow trail that marksmanship wasn't vitally necessary to hit them. And, often enough, a single shot dropped more than one man. Although there were at least five hundred soldiers in the half-regiment, five fell every fifteen seconds as the defenders of Rora moved like lightning up and down the slope, always firing and moving, only to fire and move again.
    Knowing that the others were doing the heaviest damage, Gianavel attempted to inflict the most effective strikes by taking that extra second to discern whoever seemed to be bellowing orders and then drop him from sight. He claimed twelve men with thirteen shots before he saw Captain Mario once more.
    Covered with blood, but not his own, Mario broke from the wrecked formation waving his sword wildly above his head. His eyes were feverish and unfocused, and his steps were off balance as he ran through the broken formation toward the rear. Only by chance did his words carry above the howls and screams of the wounded.
    "All is lost! Save yourselves!"
    Rifles were cast aside like kindling as soldiers spun as one and charged back down the trail, heedlessly crushing the wounded and climbing, climbing to escape the death raining down upon them without mercy from the ridge. Like men freed at last from a cavern where some hellish plague had been melting flesh from the bones of the living, the untouched fled the bat tle they had so earnestly sought. Blindly, they cast off whatever weapons they had borne to facilitate escape from these demons that fired on them from the shadows.
    The cry echoed throughout the valley everywhere and at once.
    Retreat !
    But Gianavel had no intention of letting them